Flashback Film Fest 1/5.

It’s always nice to be able to watch a dated, iconic film up on the silver screen with speakers the size of walls, and without the constant TV commercial breaks on AMC. Taken in a vacuum, Terminator is essentially a sci-fi themed bodyguard flick: a damsel in distress is targeted for assassination by a relentless hitman, and a hero appears to serve as her protector-turned-lover. This central plot is made all the more interesting by the world-building that the movie tries to do at the same time, through little details like Reese rattling off his military history for the police psychologist, as well as the brilliant flash-forwards of the apocalyptic future our protagonists are trying to avert. Terminator’s strength, surprisingly, hails from the same place as its weakness. The practical special effects used in the future-war sequences are flawless, the grimy sets, and model-based photo-wizardry still hold up very well over 30 years later, but at the same time, iconic scenes like the red-eye reveal involving prostheses and makeup, have not aged well at all. These instances, however, I feel can be forgiven in light of the technology of the time, and don’t significantly detract from what is otherwise a compelling watch.